In the field of garage doors, it is common to link a plurality of sections together to form a sectional door. To increase the aesthetic appearance of such doors when constructed from a planar material such as sheet metal, it is common to emboss some or all sections with a field pattern, e.g., wood grain, and frequently enhance the sections with selectively placed design elements, e.g., raised or recessed panels, to emulate traditional wood door designs.
A common technique for creating both the field pattern as well as the selectively placed design elements in sheet metal sections involves creating a stamping or rolling tool pair having the inverse of the pattern(s) to be embossed on the section, and subjecting a deformable sheet material to the embossing process using the tool pair. If a different pattern is desired, another tool pair must be created and applied. As a consequence, the variety of resulting sections is generally limited by the economics associated with fabricating a new stamping or rolling tool pair. In addition, if the section dimensions vary, either another tool pair must be used, or an existing tool pair is used with the resulting embossed pattern(s) being disproportionate for the formed section. While the foregoing deficiencies are generally not applicable to field patterns (the embossing tool can be formed to meet the requirements of the largest anticipated section and over-utilized for smaller sections), it is acute with respect to design elements such as panels. Thus, a panel element or combination of panel elements that may be appropriately sized and spaced for a section of one size would likely not be appropriately sized for a section of a materially different size; a new tool pair would have to be created to maintain a similar overall visual appearance. Thus, the manufacturer is left with the choice of either investing in fabrication of a new tool pair, or use the old tool pair and accept an inferiorly designed section.